Digital graphic design, image editing, audio editing, and video editing applications (hereafter collectively referred to as media content editing applications or media editing applications) provide graphical designers, media artists, and other users with the necessary tools to create a variety of media content. Examples of such applications include Final Cut Pro® and iMovie®, both sold by Apple, Inc. These applications give users the ability to edit, combine, transition, overlay, and piece together different media content in a variety of manners to create a resulting media project. The resulting media project specifies a particular sequenced composition of any number of text, audio, image, and/or video content elements that is used to create a media presentation.
Various media editing applications facilitate such composition through electronic means. Specifically, a computer or other electronic device with a processor and computer readable storage medium executes the media editing application. In doing so, the computer generates a graphical interface whereby designers digitally manipulate graphical representations of the media content to produce a desired result.
One difficulty in media editing is that a user cannot conveniently evaluate different types of media clips (e.g., a video clip, an audio clip, a sequence of media clips, an image, etc.) for a particular section of a presentation. For example, in some instances, a user may wish to evaluate a particular section of the presentation using a video clip with its accompanying sound (e.g., an audio and video clip), the video clip without its accompanying sound (e.g., a video clip), the video clip with an effect applied to it (e.g., sound effects or video effects), the video clip with different in and out points, etc. Moreover, a user may wish to evaluate different sequences of media clips, different scene durations (e.g., a single media clip versus a sequence of media clips), etc.
Typically, if a user wishes to evaluate different types of media clips than those included in the composite presentation, the user must select from a large group of media clips by iteratively accessing various different types of media clips. Thus, there is a need for a flexible media editing application that allows a user to associate different types of media clips with various sections of a composite presentation.